Kirkbride Elementary 23-24

Educators at Kirkbride provide a variety of educational experiences and opportunities that prepare our learners for a world in which they can think creatively, critically, and communicate skillfully. To fully engage in the variety of learning experiences across all curricular areas, our students require reading skills to make meaning of text.  This year, we continue to focus on building our students' reading comprehension skills so they are equipped with the tools necessary to make sense of the curricular content taught in all subject areas. 

Our student's learning goal:

Students will be able to use a variety of comprehension strategies before, during, and after reading to deepen understanding of text.

Note:  The specific reading strategies we continued to focus on include: activating prior knowledge, making connections, asking questions, making inferences, drawing conclusions and using context clues.

Teachers, across all grades provide students with learning opportunities aimed at increasing students ability to read and comprehend texts. To identify overall strengths and areas of growth, we tracked a cohort of learners which included two intermediate classes. The cohort involved a diverse range of learners that are representative of our school community. 

The classroom teachers began by reviewing student work, analyzing reading assessments, and noticing students' strengths and stretches. Through this investigation it was determined that students needed support in actively applying reading strategies to make sense out of text. Staff continued to spend time exploring many teacher resources, including: Reading Power by Adrienne Gear, the Novel Approach created by district Helping Teachers, and The Reading Strategies book by Jennifer Serravallo.

In September, both cohort classes began focusing on specific reading strategies using children's literature short stories. Students developed an understanding of the different reading strategies and how these strategies assisted them in making sense of the text they were reading.   Reading strategies (connections, visualizations, inferences, questions and transformation) were modelled. Students spent about two weeks exploring each strategy with picture books. In the second term, both cohorts read the book, "Clever Jack Takes the Cake."  Thinking was modelled out loud for students, pausing to share the strategies that they were taught. 

In the third term, the five strategies were modelled again with the first novel, "She Persisted: Ruby Bridges"  with the students. They slowly transitioned to group work, then partner work and then finally independent for the last chapter. The required learning for the novel book club was the same for each book. 

Last year, students were placed in different groups based on their preferences and interests. The students participated in an activity called, book tasting.  They were introduced to seven different children's short stories. Students shared their top three choices with the teachers and were placed in different groups. This year with on going assessment the students were placed into groups based on skills and areas of need.   The various books were presented through a commercial lens - highlighting the story in thirty seconds.   Slowly, student's interest and choice was embedded along with themes (friendships, impact on the world) and abilities/skills  towards the end of the year. This created a balance between ensuring there were books of interest with entry points for all students and student targeting skills and strategies that needed further support. 

Our educators continued to create safe learning spaces for students to meet together while reading the same book in both of the cohorts to share their thinking.  Students were treated like one big class with two educators.  Teachers were Intentional about the different groups they supported as needed.   It was observed that students were stronger in their ability to orally share their thinking rather than written responses. Therefore,  changes were made to the written templates to support all learners.

Last year, students used student bookmarks to record strategies they had used. This year there was a shift and the bookmarks were no longer used.  It was noted that students would loose their bookmarks. Therefore, this year when students met with their teachers they orally shared their thinking around the strategies.  Students also shared their workshop packages (written products). They shared their thinking and learning about the various strategies with their peers during their peer assessment review.  This formative evidence informed where teachers would provide more or less support, as well as guided lessons.

Evidence of our students’ learning demonstrates that our literacy focus positively impacted our cohort of learners. When surveyed and asked to communicate their students’ progress using the provincial assessment scale, teachers from both classes indicated that the majority of students demonstrated growth in relation to our literacy goal. Teachers based their assessments on a triangulation of evidence, including anecdotal comments taken when they sat with small groups sharing their strategies, conversations they had with students about the books they were reading, digital recordings of students sharing their thinking aloud, written work, student self-assessments and peer assessments. 

This year our teachers began earlier in the school year gathering baseline data about which reading strategies students use proficiently and which strategies need to be an area of focus. It was observed that students had a good understanding of the following strategies: connecting, visualizing and quick questioning. An area that required a deeper focus was on the following: inferencing and asking deep questions.  

The cohort teachers took the time to get to know their students in September and their interests. Our teachers used formative assessment to determine students reading abilities (decoding, comprehension). They used this information to guide the book selection for the year. Our teachers focused on explicitly teaching lessons connected to these strategies.  

What does this data tell us?

Growth was demonstrated from February to June. We saw a decrease in the number of students who were "Emerging" by (-21%). We also saw a decrease in the number of students who were "Developing" by (-10%). Most importantly, we saw a large increase in the total number of students who were "Proficient" (+27%) and an increase in students achieving "Extending" by (+4%).

Comprehending:

Students demonstrated their ability to use and apply several reading strategies. Students demonstrated collaboratively engaging and orally sharing their thoughts with their peers. Our learners experienced growth using strategies such as making inferences and asking deep questions to makes sense of what they were reading. 

In the video below, a student orally explains her experience working with peers.

In the image below, taken in June two different students demonstrate how they made sense of different words or phrases in the children's story books they were reading.

In the video below, a student orally explains a transformation he made.

In the video below, a student orally explains an inferencing strategy.

The next image shows how the student was able to state the big idea in the book he was reading and support his thinking with evidence from the texts.

Moving Forward:

Based on evidence of students’ progress in relation to learning goals, our next steps include:

•  six intermediate and five primary teachers have volunteered to be part of Responding to Readers that is a year-long literacy initiative for K-7 school teams looking to explore and engage with a community of curious professionals around how students learn to read, quality assessment routines, and responsive, evidence-informed instructional practices.
• grade three primary teachers are curious about supporting student comprehension for all learners